Dust | Ayelet Rose Gottlieb | Dream Keepers

The songs on this album reflect how we respond in these challenging times to the “too rough fingers of the world", and to questions of complex identity, home and exile.

All four band members contributed compositions to this collection, set to poetry by Langston Hughes, Almog Behar, Anna Margolin, Aurora Levins Morales and others. The music is sung primarily in English as well as French and Ayelet's ancestral languages Hebrew, Ladino, Yiddish and Arabic, and Hamin’s Farsi.

Blending Persian rhythms with Jewish music, Jazz and Rock, the album offers listeners a space for dreaming and grieving in the "quiet dark" of the unfathomable times we are living through.

As we're all bombarded with horrific news from all corners of the world, in this project, we are calling upon nature — the mountains and the forests — acknowledging the DUST that leaves a faint flavour in our mouths: it's the dust of our physical existence, but also, the stardust of our dreaming selves, reminding us that we are all interwoven.

In this music, we engage in deeply listening to our immediate environments - the quiet voice at the window, the powerful voices of ten thousand grandmothers, and the tender silences between our walls.

The group’s name is based on the poem “The Dream Keeper” by Langston Hughes which reads:

“Bring me all of your dreams,
You dreamers,
Bring me all of your
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too-rough fingers
Of the world.

Musicworks magazine wrote of our debut concert at Festival International Musique Actuelle Victoriaville: “It must be noted that Gottlieb’s group was the most pleasant surprise of the festival; her stunning new compositions were played with gusto by a dream band featuring some of Quebec’s finest instrumentalists.”

We hope you'll enjoy the music!